Debo Adegbile, a former NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer nominated by President Obama as the nation’s top civil rights official, survived a party-line vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee this week and is apparently headed toward confirmation.

What was noteworthy about the hearing was the primary reason Republicans stated for their opposition: a client Adegbile once helped represent, Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther, was convicted of the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death. A federal appeals court later overturned his sentence, saying faulty instructions limited jurors’ ability to consider evidence in Abu-Jamal’s favor, and he was resentenced to life without parole. As a prisoner, he has become a widely circulated political commentator, the subject of partisan documentary films, and a cause celebre for opposing factions: One side sees him as an unrepentant cop-killer who deserves to die, while the other views him as the innocent victim of a racist frame-up.

While with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Adegbile signed a brief supporting Abu-Jamal’s appeal, and later took part in his defense before an appellate court. Republicans repeatedly brought up his role in the case in the debate over his nomination to become assistant attorney general for civil rights.

The office requires “an absolute commitment to truth and justice,” Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said in a letter to committee members. “Mr. Adegbile’s record creates serious doubts that he is one of them.”

One committee member, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas — a former Texas Supreme Court justice — said Adegbile “has forcefully advocated for overturning the death penalty for Mumia Abu-Jamal, a man who has proudly acknowledged that he murdered a police officer.” Cornyn was apparently referring to a hospital-bed confession reported by prosecution witnesses and disputed by the defense.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett weighed in with a statement that Adegbile “pushed the bounds of appropriate advocacy in supporting the cause of a convicted murderer.” Police groups and Faulkner’s widow have added their own denunciations of the candidate.

Adegbile won committee approval on a 10-8 vote, and should benefit in his Senate confirmation vote from Democrats’ recent move to ban filibusters of executive-branch appointees and judicial candidates below the Supreme Court level.

The hearing, though, raises the question of whether lawyers who represent controversial or even hateful clients — which is sometimes part of a lawyer’s job — should have that held against them if they’re nominated to public office.

The same question arose last year when Vince Chhabria, a deputy San Francisco city attorney, was nominated for a federal judgeship. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who led the opposition, said Chhabria had a “long record of liberal advocacy.” But he cited only Chhabria’s work as a lawyer — for example, his representation of the city in a suit by Catholic organizations over same-sex couples and adoption.

The Judiciary Committee has twice approved Chhabria’s nomination, on divided votes, and he’s likely to win Senate confirmation in the near future. But if Republicans should win control of the Senate this November, we’re likely to hear even stronger and more plentiful objections to any lawyers Obama dares to nominate to federal offices in the remainder of his term.